09.02.

1950: Senator McCarthy Accuses the State Department of Harboring Communists

McCarthy claimed that U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was acquainted with the list of communists in the U.S. State Department, but had failed to dismiss them.

On this day in 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy made a hefty accusation against U.S. government institutions. According to his claims, the U.S. State Department was full of communists. Furthermore, he claimed that the Secretary of State was aware of the fact, but had failed to dismiss them. The Secretary of State at that time was the well-known Dean Acheson, a member of the Democratic Party (McCarthy was a Republican).

McCarthy made the aforementioned accusation at a ceremony organized by the Republican Women’s Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. Although McCarthy never proved the truthfulness of his accusations, they, along with others made by him, created an atmosphere of fear of communism in the USA (the so-called Red Scare). Indeed, the whole phenomenon was named McCarthyism after the senator.